update

Users turning on their Apple TV today will be surprised by an increase in the number of channels clashing it up on their big screens. That’s because Apple TV just gained four new channels – ABC News, PBS Kids, AOL On & Willow TV, and a redesigned Flickr channel.

AirParrot for Windows, a great little app that enables your Windows PC to AirPlay its screen to Apple TV, has just got a major update that adds specific application mirroring, a feature that was previously only available on Mac. The update is also said to “greatly enhance performance”, as all the main functionalities have been “touched, tweaked, improved and optimized.”

Even though you can stream any content from your Mac to the Apple TV with a native OS X (Mountain Lion or later) AirPlay Mirroring feature or by using third-party software like AirParrot, Beamer was able to grab much attention with their particular focus on just one thing – broadcasting movies from Mac to an Apple TV, in the best audio and video quality possible. With 5.1 surround sound and support for almost all common formats and codecs, Beamer is a fast and simple solution for streaming movies from your Mac directly to Apple TV. You can read our full review of Beamer here.

The developers behind Beamer have recently rolled out their biggest update yet – Beamer 2.0.The completely revamped interface is the major highlight. Besides, they’ve also worked on a few of their most demanded features, including video playlists for continuous playback. Here is the complete changelog:

Packing support for a ton of video formats, a flat interface, network streaming and cool subtitle solutions, Infuse app is often considered to be the most complete and user-friendly video player for iPhone and iPad. The developers at FireCore are pushing the bar still higher with more features in the latest 2.3 update.

AirServer for Mac has been recently updated to version 5.0.5, which adds Quad HD support. That means you can run AirServer on an iMac with mirroring optimized for Target Display and then mirror from another iMac with 1:1 pixel at 2560×1440 resolution (Quad HD). The new AirServer also fixes some Heartbleed related security issues.

In our report on Apple TV 6.1 update, we mentioned the new ability to scan for AirPlay devices via Bluetooth, in addition to the normal searching over WiFi. At that time, we couldn’t attach much significance to it, as it only helps to find devices and not to conduct AirPlay Mirroring via Bluetooth. But as more expert eyes are falling on it, this feature is turning out to be a blessing for educational institutions.